Monday 22 June 2009 12.24 EDT
First published on Monday 22 June 2009 12.24 EDT

What are the police for? Ostensibly, of course, to protect the public interest. But what is the public interest? It appears to be interpreted by most forces as preserving the status quo. Anyone who seeks political change is treated as if they were an enemy of the public interest, even when they are seeking to make the world a better place.

The Fit's methods appear to have been lifted from a Stasi training manual: everyone who dares to become politically active must be filmed, identified, monitored, logged, and cross-checked. By protesting you become an object of suspicion, as if protest were a crime. This is not policing of the kind you would expect in a free society.

The arrest of Val Swain and Emily Apple is the latest exposure of the disgracefully heavy-handed and repressive treatment of peaceful, harmless people who dared to question the way the police conduct themselves. It appears from the footage to have little to do enforcing the law, let alone protecting the public interest, and looks more like an attempt by the police to protect themselves from lawful public scrutiny. This sort of thing has always happened at demonstrations. But now, thanks to the police, we have the evidence we need.